


Between Bitter and Sweet

by SleepySpeedster



Series: Dispersed Time AU [2]
Category: Batman Beyond, The Flash (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Bittersweet, Emotionally Repressed, Flashbacks, Introspection, M/M, Mentioned Deborah Morgna, Minor Injuries, Minor Violence, One-Sided Attraction, Rare Pairings, au-ish, pairing only if you squint
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-16
Updated: 2020-04-16
Packaged: 2021-03-02 02:20:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,547
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23687548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SleepySpeedster/pseuds/SleepySpeedster
Summary: [Short fic set in my Dispersed Time AU.]After an encounter with Wally, and his truth as a villain and his past revealed, Terry tracks him down to talk.
Relationships: Terry McGinnis/Thaddeus Thawne
Series: Dispersed Time AU [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1828960
Kudos: 11





	Between Bitter and Sweet

**Author's Note:**

> Like most of the other fics I have with Terry and Thad this one is set in the Dispersed Time AU where Thad has suddenly found himself alive and displaced in Terry's time period.
> 
> **** Comments, questions, and reactions are 100% welcomed and greatly appreciated! Tell me what you liked, questions you have, anything! Give this work a kudos if you liked it. Comments and kudos help me to create more work and figure out what I should work on.****

“So which would you pick?” The speedster asks stabbing his fork into his slice of blueberry pie. Somehow, by some miracle Thad had managed to stumble across this little diner in Neo-Gotham. It wasn’t something one would have expected to find 40 years from the Gotham Thad was familiar with, and hell Terry hadn’t expected it either. It was tucked away and far from the more active parts of the city, dim like everything else, and more than likely forgotten except by the regulars who had been dining there for years. It suited someone like Thad Thawne, he thought. A 50s-style diner had no place existing in Neo-Gotham, but here it inexplicably was. 

So here Thad sat refusing to make real eye contact with him, as he scarfed down the first quarter of the pie. They had sat in silence like this for the last twenty minutes, Thad with his pie, and Terry with patience and a cup of coffee.

“Cake or pie?” The question was nonsense to Terry, but as he stared at his…friend?—he caught glimpses of the injuries from his fight slowly transform. Skin knit together cleanly, healing across his arm, his hand, and anywhere he could catch the barest traces of open skin.

“Does it really matter?” He asked. There were more pressing things for the pair to talk about.

For the first time of the night Thad looked up and actually looked at Terry. He saw him, and Terry saw him as well as the healing bruise beneath his cheek, a dull blue and purple sort of color that spread across across his cheek and disappeared behind the strands of his hair. Whatever may have been swirling deep inside those gold eyes of Thad, he refused to say or acknowledge as he went on this tangent of pies, and cakes and these sweets of his.  
  
“Of course it matters.” _Speedsters._ Terry could have rolled his eyes if it weren’t for Thad being his friend. If he hadn't been his friend who was hurting in this moment.

“Fine. Pie.” He says not giving his answer much thought. He hadn’t come for a slice of pie, or a slice of cake. He came here because this was where he had tracked Thad down to. He was here solely because of Thad not pie, but Thad didn't seem to see that.

“Are you just saying that?” He stabs his fork into the pie with an audible clack of metal against plastic. The pie was cold and beneath its sweetness was that unmistakable tang of bitterness on his tongue.

“Of course I am, Thad. Do you really think I came here to talk about desserts? I want to talk to you.” 

“Give me a real answer.” He demanded as he looked back down to the plate. He didn't want this. Not now. He hadn't meant for Terry to find out from West of all people. He had wanted to tell him himself, but that just hadn't been the case. He had been too slow, too scared, and now it was too little too late. Nothing ever went right before, so why should it now? “They’re not the same, you know.” He rambled on, "They're not just desserts. They're-"

“ _Thad!_ Why can’t we just talk about this?” He hissed out.

“Because!" His hands crashed down onto the table, his plate and their silverware clattered, as he stood and yelled, "Does it look like I _fucking_ want to talk about it?!”

Thad knew he was causing a scene. The eyes of the few patrons inside the diner were all drawn to him. He was always the one causing a scene. His existence was a scene, and there was nothing he could do to change that about himself. He would always be a villain, always a clone, and always would he look exactly like Bart. So why the hell did he try so hard? What was the point when nothing would go his way no matter how hard he tried?

Thad picks up his toppled glass and sits down.

Even is he made reparations, even if he could actually change himself, and redeem himself there would always be a reason for someone to look at him with disdain. There would always be a reason to doubt him. He had a temper. He couldn’t be trusted.

***

_‘He’s a villain, Terry! Do you even know what he did to Bart?! If you knew him half as well as I do you’d know that he’s just using you!’ Wally pressed Thad's head harder into the concrete, his cheek scrapped against the rough ground, and his grip upon the clone unrelenting. The hatred was not only clear in his words, but in his actions. Wally had once had a chance to smash the clone’s atoms and disperse his being into the side of a mountain at speeds no one else could distinguish. He would be like a fly a windshield in an instant to all except the two of them. He didn’t do it, and it remains the only regret Wally has regarding Thad Thawne._

_***_

Wally’s words echoed in his head. Even as he had been slammed into the concrete ground, Thad couldn’t help, but think that maybe he was still right after all these years. He had been using Terry for his own personal means in the beginning. He was a means to an end. That’s all. Thad had only mistakenly grown fond over their period of time together. This was just a mistake. A miscalculation on Thad’s part. He did not have feelings. He did not need a friend. He was on his own in this century, and only needed to complete his mission. Rectify the wrongs of the Thawne line and then destroy it. That’s it. That was always it.

He hadn’t meant to grow fond. He didn’t deserve that.

“I’m just tired, McGinnis.” He mutters, “I’m so _sprocking*_ tired of going through this.” He drags his hands through his blonde hair, wrenching it back. His face is hidden from Terry’s view behind his arms, but the hero can see how his entire body trembles. “I know I deserve their distrust. Their disdain. I know my death doesn’t wipe my slate clean, but why—“ Thad couldn’t form the words to the question he wanted to ask. He wasn’t sure he deserved it after everything he had done. 

Terry stared at Thad as he tried to get those words out. As a man who had been given a second chance he had a feeling that he knew exactly what Thad wanted to ask. 

_‘Why wasn’t this enough?’_

Even when you were given a chance, even when you had proved yourself time and time again…people still doubted you. They doubt who you were. They twisted you into your flaws, and could rarely look past them once they had formed those thoughts. Terry knew that well.

“I’m just tired of this all.” He hadn’t asked to have been made. He didn’t have a choice in his upbringing. He had become obsessed with Bart and angry at everyone. And in the end he had died angry and empty. Nothing had filled the holes in his life formed by an obsession he had inherited. He learned the hard way that everything he had strove for, the revenge he had wanted, had been just as empty as his ancestor’s desire to destroy the Allens. 

He had died with that emptiness, and now he was alive with it once more.

Thad lets out a sigh, “I know I should apologize for lying to you. For not really telling you who I was.” His arms fell from his head and onto the table. Still Thad couldn’t hold Terry’s gaze as his gold eyes flitted around trying to look at anything that wasn’t what he knew would be a changed and disappointed look on Terry’s face, “I’m sorry.” He says finally looking up to his friend— _former_ friend.

“It’s just that you looked at me like a person.” Hhe wanted to keep that. “You didn’t know anything about Bart.” His voice cracked as the emotions he held at bay began to overflow him. Only one other person had looked at him that way in his life. When she would smile at him, he would think that maybe his existence hadn’t been for nothing. She had been the only person to look at him like that, to laugh, and smile with him. And he had messed up that precious relationship up with one single stupid action. “And you didn’t know anything about me, so you didn’t look at me like I was a clone, or just his copy, or a thing to detest.” 

_I just wanted to keep that._

Beneath everything he told himself: about how he needed no one, and how no one needed him in the end. Thad still had wanted something in his heart.

“I’m sorry.” He breathed out so quietly between the soundless sobs that shook his body. The ones he still didn’t let out. The ones he couldn’t or else he would fall apart completely.

All Terry could think to do was place a hand over Thad’s own as he cried. 

He gripped his hand tightly, and understood Thad just a little more.

**Author's Note:**

> Sprock- 31st Future Slang for the exclamation "fuck"
> 
> **** Comments, questions, and reactions are 100% welcomed and greatly appreciated! Tell me what you liked, questions you have, anything! Give this work a kudos if you liked it. Comments and kudos help me to create more work and figure out what I should work on.****


End file.
